Jakob Nielsen on Design, RSS, Email, and Blogs 161
Carl Bialik from WSJ writes "Jakob Nielsen took some time to chat with the Wall Street Journal's Lee Gomes about RSS, email newsletters, web design and blogs. When asked whether blogs must maintain a 'conversation' with readers, Nielsen says, 'That will work only for the people who are most fanatic, who are engaged so much that they will go and check out these blogs all the time. There are definitely some people who do that -- they are a small fraction. A much larger part of the population is not into that so much. The Internet is not that important to them. It's a support tool for them. Bloggers tend to be all one extreme edge. It's really dangerous to design for a technical elite. We have to design for a broad majority of users.'"
Lee Gomes (Score:2, Funny)
That wouldn't be Lee... "Underpants" Gnomes, would it?
Email newsletters better than feeds? (Score:5, Interesting)
Nielsen says in this article that he prefers email newsletters to news feeds because "the email newsletter comes to you; it arrives in your in box, and becomes part of the one place you go to get information. That's the great strength." This is an interesting idea, but I don't think he realizes that it doesn't scale. Sure, a couple newsletters would work fine, but a few years back, I was subscribed to so many newsletters that I started filtering them into folders and essentially treating them just like feeds.
What I prefer to newsletters is user-requested content, where you can say "Send me an email when you write a new blog post/article/whatever about $SUBJECT". I'm not usually interested in everything a site has to offer, but if they're willing to pick out the things I would be interested in, I'm much more likely to want to see it.
Re:Email newsletters better than feeds? (Score:4, Informative)
What I prefer to newsletters is user-requested content, where you can say "Send me an email when you write a new blog post/article/whatever about $SUBJECT". I'm not usually interested in everything a site has to offer, but if they're willing to pick out the things I would be interested in, I'm much more likely to want to see it
I agree. I'm not a big fan of blogs, but there are occasionally ones that contain useful information and come across with some thought-provoking ideas. I like this idea of the customizeable email alert; I get these already from my bank and credit card company, and from CNN, why not a blog? When you think about it, it's similar to doing a search on a topic and following the links, except that instead of getting a lot of irrelevant crap, you get a more focused set of data. THe only caveat would be to make sure that if it's keyword based, there's some kind of threshhold that says, "alert me is $SUBJECT comes up, but only if it's talked about at length." Someone might mention a keyword once in a blog, but that shouldn't be good enough to trigger an alert -- it should only get sent out if there's enough about that subject to make it worth reading.
Re:Email newsletters better than feeds? (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Email newsletters better than feeds? (Score:2)
You can approximate this today with feedrinse.com [feedrinse.com] (which allows you to filter a feed based on search criteria) and rssfwd.com [rssfwd.com] which sends you feeds by email. I think if you combine these creatively you can get an emails for blog u
Re:Email newsletters better than feeds? (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Email newsletters better than feeds? (Score:2)
I believe people interact with periodical articles in a fundamentally different way to normal email, and that email newsletters lead people into trying to handle both of them in the same way, resulting in chaos
I agree. I did a similar input reduction on my inbox a year or two ago. Nielsen received a special exception ticket, but not without some ironic reflection on the lack of usability options he provides to his readers. I understand the argument against too many options, but in this case they are n
Re:Email newsletters better than feeds? (Score:2)
Re:Email newsletters better than feeds? (Score:2)
And the one place you go to to get spam.
Re:Email newsletters better than feeds? (Score:2)
Re:Email newsletters better than feeds? (Score:2)
The problem isn't with the technology (newsletters vs. blogs) but with the way the technology's being used. Newsletter creators learned long ago that it made much more sense to send out tightly-focused newsletters, something that many bloggers have yet to learn. Those bloggers cast too wide a net and turn off some of their readers.
One way to just get the things that interest you from a less-focused blog is to use category feeds [bloggingpro.com] if the blogging software supports it. This relies, of course, on the blogger p
Re:Email newsletters better than feeds? (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Email newsletters better than feeds? (Score:2)
I don't think Nielsen has been really relevant since the bubble burst. He's on the way to becoming as much of a nuisance as he was a help Back In The Day. Even most of his comments back then weren't really well-reasoned, but more like "this is what *I* want". He just happened to get out there first.
What a joke! (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:What a joke! (Score:2, Insightful)
In his defense: while the page is butt-ugly, one of his major points about usability is that usability needs to have priority over design.
But I do agree with you. It's got that Stallman-esque "I am so pushy about my principles that it's annoying" feel. He's overapplied his own advice, to the point where his web site looks so generic that it has no unifying brand. I don't think he realizes that if every website stuck with
The content makes it memorable. (Score:3, Interesting)
I don't konw about you, but for me, "memorable" comes from content. I don't care about flashy (or flash). I want content.
The "brand" is the information and insight.
Re:The content makes it memorable. (Score:2)
I seem to recall someone analysing useit.com using Nielsen's own techniques a couple of years back, and demonstrating (as conclusively as anything Nielsen himself ever publis
"Jump the shark" applies to websites, too. (Score:2)
I would not be surprised at that.
... decline.
You know when TV shows "jump the shark". They've run their storylines. They've developed their characters to the maximum extent of the writer's skills. Then they
Re:What a joke! (Score:5, Insightful)
I couldn't disagree more with the original poster--I think it's an absolutely great web site. The layout is clean, simple and instantly comprehensible. The purpose of this page is to direct you to information about web design...so it gives links to articles and conferences. What else could you want? A bunch of animated screenshots of web pages that dance in circles around the text? --In fact, that's what popped into my head when the original poster mentioned "garish"!
As for your (parent) comment, I think that following conventions such as using dark type on a light background, blue underlined links and legible type is not a bad thing. In fact, it's a very good thing for web pages to follow conventions. A good user interface is always a consistent interface. This principle is what made the Macintosh such a success--nearly every program that ran on the Mac had a similar menu structure, the buttons looked alike and did what you expected, and so on. (I speak in the past tense because I haven't used a Mac in years.) I hate programs that use a glitzy unique interface just to be different; you would say they are establishing "brand" identity or something--I say that they are annoying the crap out of me by having to learn a new interface just for their stupid program. (This happens a lot in games.) In this case, doing things differently doesn't make the software cool--it makes the program look amateurish.
Now, I understand that the web isn't an operating system, or a set of related application programs. Web pages serve many different purposes, and what works for one page doesn't necessarily work for another. But I have seen many more examples of web pages that defeat themselves with their unique graphics or typographical layout than I've seen examples of successful web pages that depart radically from convention. The same general rules do apply to most web pages as apply to any user interface--make me feel at home, make it clear where I'm supposed to click to do what, let me recognize a link when I see one. The first rule about breaking rules is, "Have a good reason". Break the rules only when it makes your page more effective--don't break them just to be "different".
Re:What a joke! (Score:3, Insightful)
He has far too many links of the main page.
In addition, I see the following as problems:
Easy to get lost below the fold (no indicators of what each column means;
lack of organization of links (no indicators of organization);
lack of information explaining page;
lack of actual content.
Not all of these may be agreed on by those who visit, but I think you get the point: it's not a very usable site.
Re:What a joke! (Score:2)
There's a common misconception that it's not possible to have good visual design and usability, or that "visual design" has to mean flashing dancing animations. It's a misconception that
Re:What a joke! (Score:2)
It's an example of how this could be approached, not a finalized complete product. It's meant more to make the point "usable and nice-looking aren't mutually exclusive". And it does. Could it use some changes to its CSS to accomodate text scaling more effectively? Sure, and that'd be fairly easy to do. Does that mean they should just forget about trying to make things usable and pretty? Heck no.
Also, criticizing the site it's hosted on instead of the actual design they put together is a bit of a cheap sho
Re:What a joke! (Score:3, Interesting)
Nielsen brand (Score:2)
He's overapplied his own advice, to the point where his web site looks so generic that it has no unifying brand.
Really? I can recognize Nielsen everywhere - his website and books look all the same - ugly. That's his brand [ok-cancel.com].
Re:What a joke! (Score:2)
(And le
Re:What a joke! (Score:1)
I don't know if I'd say his website is garish. Still needs a few banner ads. But his use of 'Dr.' and 'Ph.D' certainly is. Probably got those online -- hence his qualifications as a web expert.
The page certainly is an eyesore.
Re:What a joke! (Score:2)
It seems that he should have considered that different people might view the separator in ways other than he intended. This is a pretty basic tenet--consider all possible w
Re:What a joke! (Score:4, Insightful)
An oversimplification of his position, I'm sure, but that's the impression he gives. As you say, it doesn't help that his homepage is an oil spill of inscrutable links, an assault on the senses.
Re:What a joke! (Score:4, Insightful)
Your second thought is the correct one: your opening statements are a gross oversimplification of Nielsen's position.
I've read more than my fair share of his writings -- and disagree with Nielsen on any number of points -- but he isn't opposed to paratextual content in the least. He is, as you sense, quite opposed unthinking graphic and interactive design, though.
Re:What a joke! (Score:2, Interesting)
What annoys me about Nielsen is that he preaches usability, yet his homepage is practically unusable unless you think the same way he thinks. If you're a more visually oriented person than Nielsen seems to be, or you're less of a linear learner--basically, if you approach his homepage in any way he wouldn't--then it's going to be a total nightmare to navigate. His vision of "usability" works well for him, it seems, but Nielsen isn't the world.
Re:What a joke! (Score:2)
Re:What a joke! (Score:2)
Do you have a cite for anything even approaching this? I find Nielsen to be one of those people who is widely vilified for things he hasn't said and doesn't agree with. Having read plenty of Nielsen in the past, I strongly suspect you are completely misrepresenting him.
Re:What a joke! (Score:2)
You're behind the times. He moderated his stance once he was "put on the board" of Macromedia.
I have no idea w
Re:What a joke! (Score:2, Informative)
You know, I have trouble understanding how people separate "design" and "usability." Aren't these concepts inherently linked? Take a bare list of links like Nielsen's page. It isn't usable, it isn't functional, because it's user-hostile, a huge turnoff to anyone who wants to read it. Even worse if you're just browsing through. Design and functionality aren't in opposition; nor, even more clearly, are design and usability.
Re:What a joke! (Score:4, Informative)
Old reasoning. (Score:2)
IIRC, failing to consider your site's audience is also a big usability no-no.
As to graphics, there's a ton of free and inexpensive $29.
Re:Old reasoning. (Score:2)
He DOES. Right on the same page. Directly below the text you quoted, in fact. Unless you're running at 640x480 (thus validating his point that a lot of people still use old equipment --- but I digress), it should have been plain in front of you.
Re:Old reasoning. (Score:2)
So there're plenty of options beyond creating your own crummy graphics and hiring an expensive graphic artist, which, along with bandwidth, are the only reasons given. As such, his "explanations" fail to explain, and lead me to suspect he's whitewashed over the real reason: he simply doesn't care enough to do any better.
Re:What a joke! (Score:4, Funny)
There are no animated graphics, and he missed the opportunity to provide an interactive Flash marketing experience.
And black text is just, like, so readable.
Re:What a joke! (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:What a joke! (Score:2)
I can't believe this guy is a design/usability guru.
You need to understand that he is a usability guru primarily for software engineers. Graphic designers and artists and architects have been directing people's attention this way or that for a long time (e.g. centuries) before HTML. However, with the advent of web and software design, individuals with no experience in designing composition or spatial flow were suddenly making stuff that desperately needed these things. And people like Nielsen have done
Re: (Score:2, Interesting)
Hmm (Score:4, Insightful)
His idea about calling RSS feeds "News Feeds" makes sense to me (c'mon Apple, do you really need the blue RSS badge in Safari's bar? I predict this is gone in Safari 2.5/3 - replaced with an aquafied version of the universal newsfeed icon)
Beyond that and what appeared in the summary, there isn't much to the article. How does one "design" for a blogging audience? I can understand his point that bloggers, while influential on the web, are a vast, technical, vocal minority - but what does that mean in terms of design? What does it also mean that, with regards to MySpace, one of the most popular destinations on the web is also one of its most amazingly poorly designed? I mean, it's slapdash - but it's agile, meaning that they've succeeded by throwing a whole bunch of stuff to the wall, and seeing what sticks.
Re:Hmm (Score:2)
They're called "RSS feeds" because a "news feed" (or more correctly, "newsfeed") is when someone provides you with USENET news. We already have too much overloading of names in technology, let's not do it to ourselves all over again.
Blogs (Score:5, Insightful)
Journals and diaries have fallen into disuse. Our old blogs and emails are what OUR children will be reading when we die.
Re:Blogs (Score:2, Insightful)
Now, there are some legitimate news sites that have moved to a blog format, but that has nothing to do with blogging.
I consider a majority of blogs to be little more than shameless self-pr
Re:Blogs (Score:2)
So, I think you're right that people in the future will like reading old blogs, but it won't be the masses per se. For the great majority of blogs the only people who will find our blogs interesting will literally
Re:Blogs (Score:3, Insightful)
Now why do you suppose that the massive amounts of prose that's bein
Re:Blogs (Score:2)
The sentient machines may want to figure out a bit more about that funny race of squishy things they just nuked into oblivion.
Re:Blogs (Score:3, Funny)
Future generations will soon learn that our generation was composed mostly of airheads, wankers, OMGPonies, and timecubists.
Our old blogs and emails are what OUR children will be reading when we die.
No, they'll be reading MySpace entries and bleaching their eyes when they discover that the hot chick flashing her hooters at Mardi Gras was their mom.
Re:Blogs (Score:2)
Granted, there may be the capability to maintain, index, and query "electronic" journals of the
Nothing New Here, Move Along (Score:5, Insightful)
Why should I design for or even think about my grandmother's tastes if I'm doing a coding blog, or a baseball blog (that's assuming Grandma isn't a rabid Ichiro fan)?
I view Nielsen as someone who has taken a good idea and turned it into ideology. And when you do that, the goodness begins to evaporate.
Design for two audiences... your users and Googlebot. That's my motto.
- G
Re:Nothing New Here, Move Along (Score:3, Insightful)
Given that this article was published in the Wall Street Journal, I think Nielsen was (rightfully) assuming that his audience would be people who work on websites used by the general public, not the so-called "technocratic elite". Sure, if it's a coding blog, do what you want. Most of your users will figure it out, and the ones who can't don't matter. But if you're creating a web site for the general public, with wide appeal, you'll w
Re:Nothing New Here, Move Along (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Nothing New Here, Move Along (Score:2, Insightful)
Acronymns (Score:5, Insightful)
I've been trying to convince my work that for years now! But instead we have systems named
Re:Acronymns (Score:2, Interesting)
My previous employer went the other way and chose cutesy marketting names for their internal systems. They were a little more memorable, but still not descriptive:
What happenned to simple names like "Billing" or "Proposals" or "Sales"?
Re:Acronymns (Score:2)
RSS and blog design (Score:5, Insightful)
Nielsen has an interesting riff in this very slight interview (couldn't WSJ have expanded the online version of it?) on what to call RSS. It's an excellent point -- lay people don't know "RSS" the way they know "web" or even "Myspace". It is useful technology that could help a good number of people. But between the utter proliferation of newsreaders and naming conventions, it far too fragmented to cement widespread public understanding.
For a guy who loves to throw around numbers, I find Nielsen's comment about blogs incoherent and worthless. Is there evidence that blogs are being designed for the technical elite? What is this "one extreme edge" that bloggers are on? Is there evidence that blogs are corporate marketing tools even are trying to find a broad audience? These are incredibly dubious assertions. Any thoughtful strategy for reaching out to customers is going to combine blogging, email, RSS and other technologies in an audience-specific way. Duh.
Re:RSS and blog design (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:RSS and blog design (Score:2)
Well, yeah, but ain't the point so obvious that it shouldn't even have been mentioned in a WSJ article. I mean, blogs were designed from the ground up to be a vehicle for personal interaction. Why would anyone think they were useful in marketing?
There are other
Ahhhh (Score:3, Informative)
I'm definately not an English major, but I believe it should either read
For Web-Design Experts, Ease of Use And Clarity Are Essential for Firms
OR
For a Web-Design Expert, Ease of Use And Clarity Are Essential for Firms
Almost sounds like a post from engrish.com
Re:Ahhhh (Score:4, Informative)
Re:Ahhhh (Score:3, Insightful)
This guy is clueless (Score:2, Interesting)
What planet is he browsing? Here on Earth, we have blogs that get updated in response to the day's events, often as fast or faster than the MSM. Want to know the latest on the SCO vs. IBM case? Wh
Re:This guy is clueless (Score:2)
Don't be so quick to write him off as clueless when you haven't actually read what he's saying. He's not talking about the speed at which information is published, he's talking about having it published on a regular schedule.
I don't really seen the point in publishing something at a set time or on a particular day, but some people think it's incredibly important. For these people, the fact that weblogs might publish it first isn't important, the fact that they are just publishing on the whim of the au
Who? (Score:2)
Who?
Do you know any? Why would they care?
Apart from sources like the guy quoted in the article, do we even have any reason to suppose that such people exist? From the push/supply side (e.g., a newspaper, or TV show with a schedule to keep) it makes a great deal of sense. But from the pull/consumer side? Do you really think there are people who would rather bre
Re:Who? (Score:2)
Yes. I'm not sure why, I suspect a combination of some form of snobbery and the idea that a particular news segment can be thought of as covering the time period between the last article and the current one. When you publish news articles on a schedule, there's a reasonable expectation that you are covering a particular time period, but there's no similar expectation when you just read what people publish when they feel like it - you don't know whether they are c
Re:Who? (Score:2)
No, I'm not the one that's creating the false dichotomy; Nielson is the one that set it up (albeit with "tend to"/"don't tent to" weasel words). I'm just pointing out how silly it is--and that's the part you seem to agree with. I would be quote happy to see news outlets provide richly linked stories with searchable arc
RSS and email are different modes of communication (Score:4, Insightful)
But email is a two-way communication; RSS is really primarily one-way. That makes for a technological difference: with RSS, because it's fetch, you know you're not getting spam. Email is push, and so it's hard to distinguish newsletters from spam. And it's one more site to give your email address to, meaning one more opportunity for spammers to steal/buy it.
Getting newsletters out of the email loop will make it easier to support some anti-spam technologies. Newsletters are one of the downfalls of pay-to-send schemes, because a free newsletter emailed to a million people at $.00001 turns into real money.
I like integrating RSS into the email stream. Some email apps already support RSS, and I would like to see them show up in just a single queue of "stuff to read".
Re:RSS and email are different modes of communicat (Score:2)
Early feed readers had problems with this, but the state of the industry has improved significantly; popular feed readers are increasingly supporting "conditional GET", which is a feature of HTTP that le
Re:RSS and email are different modes of communicat (Score:2)
There are a number of problems with the plan. One is that you can't right now usefully charge $.00001 for anything; the overhead will kill you. There are various schemes to work around that
Comment removed (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:The blogosphere is already dead (Score:3, Informative)
If you're getting 10,000 regular viewers per month, you ought to be getting at least 50,000 page hits per month. You can get $2 per 1,000 impressions from advertising almost without lifting a finger. $100 per month ought to pay for some hefty bandwidth. I don't
The fanatics (Score:2, Insightful)
What? (Score:4, Funny)
Yeah, just look at what a colossal failure Slashdot is...
Re:What? (Score:2)
Compare to myspace.
Fighting the good fight against irrelevance (Score:5, Insightful)
It's nice to have a face for your industry but I'd really rather see someone like Steve Krug [sensible.com], Luke Wroblewski [lukew.com] or Jennifer Tidwell [jtidwell.net] who have done more than design a pre-Cambrian version of Sun's website and a bunch of pie-in-the-sky concept projects. The fact of the matter is that "real artists ship".
Seems like gobbledy-gook to me (Score:3, Interesting)
In the past 6 months I even started to help some of my corporate customers create their own blogs. By next week my company will maintain 6 corporate blogs which seem to be making big strides in keeping my customers' customers happy and informed. Again, fringe topics, but who cares if the production creates a profit (financial or informational).
I think a lot of old-media promoters will find many ways to downplay the strength of the lone blogger, but it is more than just fringe opinions and a dozen return readers -- it is about creating that "social networking" structure within your social group, and then finding ways to involve your group with others. I believe it is working very well, and I think the future is huge for bloggers, wikis and all sorts of odd social-networking web interfaces.
RSS (Score:2)
Re:RSS (Score:2)
The solution to this is the same as the solution to browsing from a text-only user agent like Lynx: make sure the HTML you supply degrades gracefully.
Re:RSS (Score:3, Insightful)
Says who? TBL's first version of H T ML didn't include IMG, and his first web browser couldn't display graphics.
Re:RSS (Score:2, Informative)
Uh [w3.org]... no [w3.org].
You must be new.
Unfortunately your post will now continue to exist.
<grrr
Re:RSS (Score:3, Insightful)
HTML is now graphical; RSS was, in my opinion, designed to be easily machine readable. I do now have filters built in now, but I am still discovering additional creative techniques people have for complicating something that was supposed to be simple, which then requires more code;
If you want to publish HTML data to your customers, I recommend using HTML.
Re:RSS (Score:2)
right, but not that right (Score:5, Insightful)
By "dangerous", he means just to the corporate bottom line. by "we", he just means businesses.
The rest of us "elite" are being designed for just fine, thanks.
He does have a point about the difference between email and rss. That's why I swear by rss2email [aaronsw.com]. it scans feeds, and wraps up items into my email inbox. best of both worlds.
Re:right, but not that right (Score:3, Interesting)
Most of his pronouncements in this article show a shocking resistance to the current directions of the web. His 82% of user are unaware of RSS almost directly correlates with a MSFT browser share - and it being unable to handle it. You've got a massive population frustrated by the lack of tools to monitor fresh web content, including blogs, that will suddenly tune into the infinite channel network of the
Re:right, but not that right (Score:3, Interesting)
Atom/RSS became popular long before browser support came about. I don't see why you are tying news feed ignorance to Internet Explorer's lack of support - any Internet Explorer user can sign up for a web-based aggregator today, without any special support. Users aren't hampered by Internet Explorer in this respect, it's their own ignorance, and probably at least partially because it doesn't do much for a lot of people. Not everyone's a geek.
Opera RSS (Score:2)
It's just like e-mail. Searchable like gmail and fast like any desktop client.
And with tooltip notification of new rss feeds.
More information (Score:5, Insightful)
He's gone into more detail in his latest Alertbox column [useit.com]. One thing that caught my eye:
This makes no sense whatsoever. If you are reading a feed, the website is a click away. If you are reading an email newsletter, the website is a click away. In both cases you aren't reading the information on the website.
It only make sense once you substitute "some of our users" for "some publishers". Email newsletters don't really have a strong tradition of including the entire article in the notification email, but plenty of people complain if you only provide partial feeds as opposed to full-text feeds.
I've seen a lot of resentment from some publishers because they think that because the person is reading their article, that they should be able to dictate that they read it on the website. But I've never seen any users complain that Atom/RSS feeds aren't "serendipitous enough". That makes no sense.
Re:More information (Score:2)
When Robert Scoble started writing about this [wordpress.com] and saying that he simply wouldn't subscribe to partial feeds, there were plenty of people agreeing with him.
Most people don't have the bandwidth they use to download as an important motivator. Why do you? Are you reading feeds with your mobile phone or so
Re:More information (Score:2)
But if you read the whole thread, you'll see I'm specifically taking issue with the claim that the readers are complaining about this. You said that, as a reader, you prefer not to have full-text feeds too.
If the reader wants to buy stuff, they'll click through anyway.
An idea for the ultimate tool (Score:4, Interesting)
So here's what is needed: A web-based service or client-side program (either one would be fine, I think) that lets me set up finely-tuned RSS "smart folders".
Let's say I am shopping for a 120 gb hard drive.
* First, I tell the folder what feeds I want it to check: DealNews, Fatwallet, etc.
* Then, I tell the folder what criteria or terms I want it to look for. Ex.: Show me all items that, in the title or text, include the word "120" AND "drive" AND ("hitachi" OR "seagate" OR "toshiba" OR "samsung").
* From then on out, I can see the results with just a single click on the folder, like a smart playlist on iTunes or a search folder in Thunderbird.
I've tried doing this so far with Vienna (mac) and Thunderbird (pc). Both support smart folders, but are crippled because they don't allow finely grained searches, (I can't believe no one has written an extension that improves on T-Bird's rudimentary filtering criteria!) like regular expressions.
To me, this sounds like the perfect solution. Does anyone know if it exists?
- AJ
Re:An idea for the ultimate tool (Score:3, Informative)
Re:An idea for the ultimate tool (Score:2)
I wish it was free (big shocker there, huh?). There are a lot of free tools (like the aforementioned Vienna and Thunderbird) that are just SO close in terms of functionality. I mean, for shopping alone, this is such a great idea! You tell it what you're looking for, and boom, there you go.
Another thought -- If implemented via a web interface, this would be a total no-brainer f
Re:An idea for the ultimate tool (Score:2)
Shameless plug: the newspaper I work for offers something like this. For any terms and parameters you enter into our search system, you can set up a persistent alert for new items matching those terms and parameters; we'll notify you via your choice of email, RSS or text message when something new comes up. Want to hear about it every time we publish a story containing the word "alpaca"? Go for it. Want to be notified whenever somebody lists a Ford Mustang in our classifieds? You've got it.
It's a really h
Re:An idea for the ultimate tool (Score:2)
Using thunderbird, for example, I can choose the RSS feed, and retrieve from that feed any item that contain the word, say, "jayhawk". What I can't get it to do is, from a user-defined set of feeds, get items that do include the term ("jayhawk") but don't contain the terms ("music" OR "band").
You'd think Google would be all over this, but nope: http://www.google.com/reader/view/ [google.com]
- AJ
Standing up for Jakob (Score:2, Insightful)
So, you're all anti-science? (Score:2, Interesting)
Nielson's views have changed as his research (real research using scientifically sound principles). For example, in the last century he advocated, based on studies of users, that long pages were bad design. Folks didn't know how to scroll, and long pages ate some of the primitive browsers (and
Re:Please people (Score:2)